Upon opening the Seattle paper this morning (I was at a friend's house for the weekend) I noticed a story about the departure of the Concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony, Ilkka Talvi. Ilkka has been the concertmaster of the SSO since 1985, which for all intents and purposes is the entirety of my time as an musician with any aspirations of making a career in music.

What struck me about this leave-taking of a prominant musician from a major orchestra was the bluntness of the dismissal. In many cases, a musician is said to have "resigned for personal reasons". We all know that they were sacked, but it's a way of putting a polite face on it, and many in the public assume that it was an amicable separation.

In this case we have a non-renewal of contract, which cannot possibly be construed as anything other than a firing. Even Maestro Scharz's comment on Ilkka's performance as concertmaster for almost 20 years is strikingly lackluster.

I have found in my limited experience that one is more apt to be blunt when one has a lot of power (witness the state of world politics these days), even though a polite way of putting things often reaps long-term dividends, and those in a less strong position will take pains to take the high road, even if they might wish to be a bit more direct.

It will be interesting to follow the concertmaster selection process in Seattle, and see if the collaborative model is followed, or if it will be a music director fait accompli.

We just finished a two-year process of choosing our new concertmaster, and actually, even though there were something like 8 invited candidates, the person we finally hired was the only candidate to win the cattle-call open auditions held as a preliminary round. In addition, the entire process was undertaken in a very collaborative process involving a 13 member musician audition committee along with the Music Director, and opinions were solicited from all interested orchestra members.